Several schools in Charles County are without power. Generators are working to provide emergency power to those schools.

School officials said Monday that the schools without power include La Plata High School, Mary H. Matula Elementary School, the F.B. Gwynn Center and others in various parts of the county.

School system spokeswoman Katie O’Malley-Simpson said school officials are getting scattered reports of schools without power. Generators at the schools are running and staff are working on plans to get lunches to schools without power.

O’Malley-Simpson said classes are combining in rooms that are well-lit due to natural light and emergency lights.

The Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building, the schools system’s central office, including the two annexes and the maintenance shop, was without power for a few hours.

O’Malley-Simpson said the generator at the Starkey building failed this morning but by 11 a.m. SMECO officials said power to that building was restored.

Due to the lack of power, the school system’s website is offline.

Anytime a school is without power, even with generators working, some concerns in addition to feeding students lunch include access to water and the amount of light the schools have, O’malley-Simpson said.

She said this is an evolving situation and more information will come out as it becomes available.

The Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative is working to correct the problems.

SMECO spokesman Tom Dennison said there are about 5,100 customers without power in Charles County, mostly on the western side of the county.

The outages are widely due to trees falling on power lines.

He said there are 44 SMECO crews out working on the outages including six contracted crews and 10 Pennline tree cutters, nearly 200 personnel in total.

He said more than 10 feeder lines have been restored already today but what seems to happen, he said, is that once one is restored, another goes out.

He said SMECO will continue to work through the day and into the night to get power restored to customers.